Free and open-source software
  used to create it.
Making source code available means anyone with the programming ability can customise the software for their own ends or contribute to the development project directly. Others can help by reporting bugs and helping with documentation or translation efforts. So this encouragement of interaction between users and developers, and some users becoming developers, creates a positive feedback loop in the software's evolution. Open source is becoming a very prominent method of software production and poses a serious challenge to commercial products - as the quality of open-source software approaches and supercedes commercial software, how will software companies compete with free? Although 'free software' is usually free of charge, the 'free' in the title actually refers to the user's freedoms to use, modify and redistribute the software. It should be also noted that 'Free software' is not the same thing as 'freeware' or 'shareware' which although they might be free to download, do not usually come with source code and cannot be freely modified or redistributed.
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So what about free riders? What happens when there are people who only take and never give anything back? Well, nothing really. Contributors are not expecting a specific quid pro quo arrangement — they get plenty in return from using other things in the universal commons. This is the essence of a post-scarcity economy; when a resource is abundant, it can be given away without expecting anything in return. If it is trivial to duplicate the results of someone's efforts then the more people who are able to make use of it, the better. The situation is not zero-sum — people are not going without as a direct result of someone else having it. A situation of abundance currently exists with regard to information on the Internet; it is free to replicate, I can give it to others without going without it myself, and as a result, people give it away freely and take it freely. Consider free and open-source software where anyone with a computer and internet connection can download the Firefox web browser or OpenOffice office software for free. Most people will be consumers rather than contributors, but this is of no consequence. After a while of enjoying the fruits of open-source, many people are only too happy to contribute in some way, giving back to the community that has provided for them. The fact that they are not required to do this, in many instances makes it more likely that people will do so, uncoerced. This is human nature. |
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What goes around comes around
If the software is useful to many people then there is a wide audience who can get involved. People are motivated to contribute because the result of their work benefits many people. Someone putting in effort on an open-source software project knows there are similar minded people putting in effort on other software projects that will be useful to them also. So what goes around comes around.
Maximum utility
The fact that thousands of other people are able to make use of the software having put in no effort themselves and haven't paid any money simply isn't an issue - after all it effectively costs nothing to replicate the software and the open-source developers are only too happy that it is proving useful to a wider audience. It is truly maximizing it's utility.
Commercial software that has restrictions on what you can do with it, such as not giving a copy to your friend, imposes an artificial scarcity on it in order that they can charge money for it. In the world of bits and the internet this commercial model doesn't make much sense and starts to break down.
Because of the mutual benefits, open source projects encourage collaboration on an almost unheard of scale, as well as promoting rapid evolution and stability of the applications being developed (one might normally consider the last two properties as being mutually exclusive). There are now high quality open source projects filling every major category of software application, including entire operating systems for your computer.
Beyond software
This methodology is not limited to software. A noteable example beyond software is the 'open content' Wikipedia, the famous collaborative encyclopaedia which is accessible and editable by anyone with a web browser. It founder ambitiously states that he wants to capture the knowledge of all humanity - and it is a most impressive start. It was started in 2001 and is now the largest and most comprehensive encyclopaedia in the world grown organically by the contributions (and editing) of thousands of users, and the overall quality of articles on the whole is surprisingly good. See this article from the journal Nature.
With a few built-in mechanisms to make sure the project doesn't dissolve into total chaos, the result is that this pool of knowledge is assembled and edited by people who want to do it and is now an amazing resource for anyone wanting a basic introduction to almost any subject. No-one is paying them to do it and no-one is telling them to do it, they contribute because they want to. It feels like the right thing to do - they are contributing to something greater. Contributors' know their efforts will be used and appreciated by thousands of other people, and that others are doing likewise.
It is apparent that these methods could also be applied to the design of physical machines and artefacts. With this development model designs, photos, instructions and CAD models are stored on the internet for others to use and improve upon. Design and engineering is arguably even more suited to this method than software design. This is because looking at a CAD model (especially if animated) allows an intuitive understanding of how the object functions, whereas software is composed of reams of (often obscure) programming code.
For further information on the open-source method applied to design and engineering see open collaborative design.
External links
Organisations
- Free software foundation (FSF) website
- Open Source Initiative (OSI) website
Documents and articles
- FSF Free software definition
- OSI Open source definition
- The Cathedral and the Bazaar - an interesting essay on why the 'bazaar' model of open-source software development works well.
Software links
- Wikipedia list of open source software packages
- http://www.linux.org Free and open-source operating system
- http://www.OpenOffice.org Free and open-source office productivity software - word processor, spreadsheer, presentation software, database etc.
- http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox Free and open-source web browser
- http://www.gimp.org Free and open source 2D bitmap-graphics editor
- http://www.blender.org Free and open-source 3D graphics modeller, animator and renderer
- The content management software that manages this website is open source and is called MediaWiki; and the server computer that hosts it is running a version of the Linux operating system called Debian which in turn is running the Apache http server program (which runs 60%, or so, of websites worldwide), and PHP and the MySQL database.
